Inderpal Grewal

On her book Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century America

Cover Interview of February 18, 2018

Lastly

I would like people to rethink our concern for security
within our families and communities, in the country and internationally. We
have spent so much money on militaries and the war on terror and yet we still have
serious problems with inequality and violence in this country. Weapons
manufacturers, digital media and entertainment corporations obsessively focus
on weapons, guns, killing and wars. Violence has long been central to
entertainment, and the connection between the U.S. military and entertainment
industry is a long history. Now digital media has expanded this use of
violence, still aligned with the military, but also “securitizing” and
militarizing communities and families via new technologies. They use violence
to profit from us or to control us. Perhaps we need to be less afraid, less
paranoid, especially with regard to the diversity of humans among whom we
dwell. We have come to believe that every nation-state should be a
territorially bounded entity with a racial and linguistic monoculture inside
it. That is an incorrect reading of history and a desire that nurtures racism
and violence—even fascism. Being less afraid should be a mantra for us. Being
less afraid would stop us from surveilling each other and make us less
suspicious. Understanding the histories of race, class, religion, ethnicity,
gender and sexuality are steps towards this goal. My goal is to have us consider
how to make societies less militaristic and less violent.

My other goal is writing this book is to understand that
humanitarianism is not a solution to the world’s problems. So much research has
now made clear that humanitarianism is at most a band-aid to problems which are
complex and large-scale. What we see today around the world are the effects of
histories of colonialism on regions of the world that were used mainly for
extraction of humans and resources and left in terrible condition. This extraction
of people and resources continues—mining corporations are still literally
impoverishing indigenous communities globally—and it benefits the wealthy.
Humanitarianism cannot correct this. Humanitarianism is about the power of the
humanitarian, and it shows the inequality, often racial, between the giver and
receiver. It simply gives wealthy people, and mostly white Westerners, more
power to choose whom, when and where they give help, rather than ending the
predatory practices of extraction that creates violence and danger for
impoverished communities. This is not to indict advocacy or volunteer work
since these are essential to a democracy, but I am concerned that what was the
work of the state (providing care and a safety net for all) is now being replaced
by volunteer work that is often sporadic, and with little oversight or accountability.
Volunteer work should not be a resume builder or something that people do while
on vacation or when they retire or if they feel generous or guilty. Advocacy
and resistance is work that we should do continually in our everyday lives to
force governments to do what is necessary, not just as citizens but as
inhabitants of any place on this planet.

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011